The 3 Phases of Muscle Growth



There are 3 critical phases to building muscle; Training Stimulus, Rest and Nutrition. All three need to be focused on equally, or the results of your training will be affected in a negative way.

1. Training Stimulus
This is everything you do in the gym – weight training, cardio, etc. For muscle growth, you must ensure that all the training you do overloading the stimulus. To do this, you’ll need to put extra stress on the body that it hasn’t encountered before (such as extra weight), to make sure that it reacts in some way. You can also achieve overloading the stimulus by decreasing rest time and increasing reps – anything that will work towards you getting bigger.

Most bodybuilders chose to include cardio in their workout routine as it increases appetite and helps deliver nutrients to the muscles, and if you are one of them, you will want to balance it with your weight training. Too much cardio will take away too much energy and when it’s high intensity, it takes a long time to recover from – all of which is taking your body away from building muscle tissue.

The amount of reps you decide to depends on your end goal. If you’re working on adding size you’ll want to go for a higher quantity of reps (e.g. 8 to 12), but if your focus is strength development, the lower range (e.g. 4 to 6) will suffice. You can always alternate day to day, month to month, or even within the same gym session if you want to achieve both.

2. Rest
It is a common misconception that the more time you spend in the gym, the quicker you will grow. The truth is the time spent exercising is breaking your muscles down, it’s during the resting period that they gain strength and size. This means if you work out before your muscles are ready, you will be tearing down already broken muscle. You need to incorporate at least one full days rest into your schedule – preferably more.

3. Nutrition
As discussed in the previous section of this app, nutrition is extremely important to bodybuilding. Without amino acids your body won’t have the necessary energy to build up the muscle you desire. You will want to be careful about the amount of fat you consume, but a small amount is beneficial as it supports healthy testosterone.